Site: Vitoria, Spain Architect: Francisco José Mangado Beloqui Work direction: Francisco José Mangado Beloqui Collaborators: Architecture: José Mª Gastaldo, Richard Král’ovič, Eduardo Pérez de Arenaza. Structural engineering: NB 35 SL (Jesús Jiménez Cañas / Alberto López) Ingenieros. Installations engineering: Iturralde y Sagüés ingenieros / César Martín Gómez. Acoustic engineering: Higini Arau. Estudi Acustic. Lighting: ALS Lighting arquitectos consultores de iluminación (Antón Amann). Quantity surveyor: Laura Montoya López de Heredia. Contractor: UTE Arqueología (Dragados SA, Lagunketa SA). Total area: 6.000 m2 Total cost: $9.000.000 € Competition: 2000. First Prize Project Contest Project: 2002-2003 Construction: 2004-2009 Client: Diputación Foral de Álava. Photos: Courtesy of Francisco Mangado
We like to think of an archaeology museum as a compact jewel box concealing the treasure that history has entrusted to us piece by piece. But not any kind of history, or at least not the scientific history of experts, which does not always leave room for imagination and almost always exhausts itself. We like to think of a history to call our own, and which never ends, because it lives on in each small or large finding, and in the eye of the observer, a whimsical eye that relies on what it wants to see, rather than on what it actually sees. For this reason, the small box, though dense and hermetic on the outside, must be suggestive and magical on the inside. The space within can be neither a mere organizing element, nor a beautiful but distant architecture; it must have the ability to evoke places and people from a tiny yet resilient fragment of ceramic which has managed to survive, and which speaks of the fragility of time.
